


Lost and Found(ling)

by orphan_account



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Heed tags and proceed with caution, No graphic description of rape itself, Off-screen Rape, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:21:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22119337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: As Cara Dune hovered over his weakened body on Navarro, Din Djarin recalled a time from his past when he'd made a painful sacrifice in order to maintain his identity as a Mandalorian.Please read the tags and proceed with caution.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 150





	Lost and Found(ling)

Din Djarin grasped Cara Dune's wrist instinctively, preventing her from lifting the helmet to assess and treat his head wound. Allowing his helmet to be removed before her, even though he considered her a trusted friend and ally, would mean the end of everything he's grown to become. The man he is now would cease to exist, while his body would continue to move through time and space without purpose or identity. He would be _dar'manda_ , forbidden to don _beskar'gam_ or return to the Covert again...a fate worse than death for those who have sworn the Creed. It would mean losing his culture and his home (or the closest thing to one that he would admit to himself) for a second time.

Din had opted for a worse outcome than death before, when faced with the threat of just such a reveal. It was when he was much younger and less experienced, having donned the warrior's armor and sworn the warrior's oath, but possessing neither the strength nor reflexes he had spent the years since then honing. Death would be an easy thing to accept, compared to that ordeal...

\------

It was an excruciatingly hot summer, made even more insufferable by the layers of cloth and metal to which Din had believed himself accustomed. As it turns out, the 20-year-old's willpower and constitution were being tested more than he'd like to admit that particular season. He had committed himself to The Way when he was but a child, and he certainly had never regretted this choice, but the sweltering summer had burst through his mental defenses with record-breaking heat and relentless drought. While he had no problem resisting the temptation to remove his helmet or armor, Din was reconciling with the fact that he was not yet the unaffected Mandalorian warrior he hoped to someday be.

Heat was one thing - he could handle heat. But when it was compounded by the fact that every member of the Covert who was not on a mission was doing their best to conserve resources, and provide for the foundlings, thereby limiting their water and food intake to the bare minimum for survival -- well, he was lucky to have gone this far without either screaming from frustration or passing out.

That afternoon, he had been assigned to guard and provide care for a group of foundlings, since he was not quite ready to embark on missions with the training he had so far. His fighting style was quick, without hesitation -- quick to strike first (often taking his opponent by surprise), quick to react, quick to assess, to formulate plans and execute them. He also displayed ingenuity that had impressed those who had trained and sparred with him, exhibiting a propensity for being able to get out of sticky situations with surprising grace (and sometimes, with what Paz would bitterly describe as 'dumb luck').

But both of these abilities were dulled by the pervasive ache of hunger, and his parched throat. In fact, most of Din's higher-level thinking skills seemed to be operating at a lower capacity than normal. What hadn't been affected was his sheer tenacity in the face of seemingly hopeless situations -- something he would have to call upon before day's end.

The foundlings he was overseeing ranged in age from toddler to teenager. They all had their own trauma to sort through, and each was handling it in whatever way they could. Din could empathize...he had gone through the same thing ten years ago, when the Mandalorians lifted him to safety from a warzone. Some of these foundlings were adjusting as well as one could to a situation such as theirs -- acting strong in front of other people, but crying themselves to sleep each night. These children were often able to give comfort and words of encouragement to those around them, regaining a bit of themselves by helping others.

Other foundlings reacted more volatilely -- uncontrollable sobbing, flinching or hiding from caretakers, or even lashing out violently. The Mandalorians knew and accepted that these were all different ways children might cope with the shared trauma of war, and devoted themselves to guiding every single foundling through the arduous task of healing.

But the most difficult ones to get through to, the kind of foundling that Din had been, were those that didn't appear to react at all. They sported shell-shocked expressions, stoic speech and behavior, and a far-off look in their eyes that betrayed their inner turmoil. These kinds of foundlings went through each day in a sort of denial, continuing to mentally reenact the trauma they had endured. Those were the children that took the most patience and dedication to heal. They refused to believe they were safe, refused to let down their guard, until one day the pressure would build up to a crescendo and they would break, whether mentally or physically. This would often be the point at which their healing could truly start, though ironically the stress they'd put themselves through often resulted in severe illness and weakness. Only once they allowed the morbid fantasy that they'd built up around themselves to shatter, and accepted that their life would never be the same again, could they begin to pick up the pieces and rearrange their lives into some semblance of normalcy.

Din found himself in charge of one such foundling that sweltering day, a boy not much older than he'd been when he first came to the Covert, and it was bringing back unpleasant memories of his own rescue. The images of destruction flickered and flashed violently across his mind, but Din simply closed his eyes and exhaled with a practiced calm, willing his heart to beat more slowly. He scolded himself inwardly, unwilling to risk getting dizzy or losing consciousness because of a panic attack in his current state -- not when these children were depending on him.

Despite his dedication to his task, the sensation of sweat trickling down his neck was quite distracting in a way that Din hated to admit. He grunted, rubbing the back of his neck in agitation. However, his hand stilled as he noticed the solemn boy from earlier gazing out the small window, which was hidden as it peeked out from the base of a wall on the busy street above.

The boy had seen something outside that made him go rigid, eyes wide and fixed on whatever he had spotted. His chest heaved, his breaths turning shallow, and Din cursed, quickly getting to his feet to go comfort the child. How he would do that, he really had no clue. But he had to try, as something resembling pure terror had begun to creep onto the child's face.

"Hey, kid..." Din spoke softly, his voice soothing even with the distortion from his helmet and his hands held out in a placating manner. As he approached, he glanced out the window himself to see what had caused such an upset.

"Ah, shit," he muttered. Just outside the window were the unmistakeable white armor boots of storm troopers, idling nearby in what could be misconstrued as a threat, but Din knew it was just happenstance. They had no clue the Mandalorians and their foundlings were huddled in secret right below them. If they did, they wouldn't be standing around...

Regardless of the harmlessness of the situation, the perceived danger was more than enough ammunition to a mind plagued by fear. The child's labored breathing had begun to draw the attention of the kids around him, some of whom stared at him with a mix of worry and curiosity.

"Hey, hey," Din rasped out, licking his lips. "It's okay, you're safe. They don't know we're here." He approached the child cautiously, who had not blinked or looked away from the storm troopers. His breathing was so ragged that Din could hear his lungs rattling with each wheeze.

" _Ad'ika_ , I need you to breathe for me," Din implored, reaching out a single gloved hand to rub the child's back. However, instead of being comforted, the unexpected contact snapped the focus of the child away from the storm troopers and on to Din. The child flinched back from the touch with a terrible gasp and jumped to his feet, bed frame screeching across the floor from his sudden movement as a horrified hush settled over the whole room. Din recognized the look in those eyes -- they weren't seeing him, they were seeing something else in the child's mind. A memory or a construct, something that escalated the child's fear to new heights. Before he could even get a word out, the child bolted from the room.

 _"Haar'chak!"_ Din hissed, rushing out into the corridor after his charge. The child was already out of sight, though Din knew he could use his visor to follow his tracks. He tapped his communicator and barked out a request before taking off -- "Paz, watch the kids! I've got a runaway!"

"Seriously!? _Kandosii!"_ Paz retorted, but Din knew that despite their disagreements and Paz's well-known disdain for him, he would do what Din demanded. The foundlings are the future, and all in the Covert share the responsibility of caring for them. This Is The Way.

Din detected the child's tracks with ease, and followed them through twists and turns until he arrived at the hidden entrance leading to the bustling surface above. Cursing the kid's swiftness and seemingly innate ability to navigate, Din did not hesitate to follow the tracks up and into the city streets. He knew it was dangerous. He knew it was reckless. He knew it went against the Covert's rules, because their secrecy was their survival. But the last thing he was going to do was give up and abandon a scared child in a dangerous city who needed his help. He swallowed thickly and licked his chapped lips, tasting the salt of sweat on his cupid's bow, and plunged into the blinding daylight.

He did his best to stick to the walls and shadows, trying to keep out of sight while pursuing the foundling. Despite not being in direct sunlight, he could feel the midday heat sapping his energy, and knew he would need to recover his stray before long to avoid heatstroke.

Thankfully, within a few blocks, the tracks took a sudden turn down an alley Din knew to be a dead end. They led him around a dumpster of discarded spare parts, too rusted or obsolete to be of use to anyone, where he found the kid huddled and shivering, hands over his ears, tears upon his face, and eyes screwed shut. Din let out a shaky exhale, the adrenaline of the chase leaving his body a tired wreck. He knelt down beside the child, who was still oblivious to his presence, and folded him in a tight embrace, pressing his chest to the child's back and wrapping his arms around his chest. The child lett out a strangled cry in alarm. At first his body stiffened, then he fought back, kicking and struggling against Din's tight hold. All the while, Din spoke to the child in a calming manner.

"It's okay, _Ad'ika_ , you're okay, I'll protect you," Din whispered, holding the wriggling and now sobbing child against his chest so he could feel the reverberations as he spoke. Din ignored the child's pleas for help, cries which struck at his core like physical blows, continuing to talk in what he hoped was a pacifying tone. "No one is going to hurt you. I will protect you or die trying. This Is The Way."

After a long and tense standoff, the child finally slackened in his hold, sobs reduced to mere sniffles. Din loosened his arms, and the foundling shifted in his hold so it could hug him fiercely. Din returned the hug, exhaling in relief and feeling the weak state of his body come into full focus.

"Let's get you back to safety before Paz can think up more ways to hold this against me," he murmured, and the child nodded, his tear-stained face lowered in obedience.

Din rose to his feet, pulling the child up with him. But something felt wrong--

The sun-filled streets beyond the alley dimmed to black momentarily, and Din brought a shaky hand to his visor as he grunted, disoriented. He suddenly felt the stifling heat he'd ignored until now, his hunger and thirst exacerbated by unexpected activity and elevated heart rate.

Din gently pushed the child away at arm's length, just as a sudden wave of nausea crashed down on him. Din thrust his other arm out blindly, smacking the wall of the building next to him and slumping against it as all strength seemed to leave his limbs. His head felt swollen and pounded miserably, and he could distantly hear his own ragged breathing through the static of his helmet. The last thing he saw before blacking out was the child's scared expression, reaching a hand out to him, and his little mouth hung open in surprise. Then, with frightening swiftness, Din's eyelids fell and the world around him was snuffed out.

\------

When consciousness returned just as suddenly, Din was lying on the ground on his side, dry throat itching and causing him to cough and groan as he flinched awake. The child was kneeling before him and yelling (though it sounded muffled to Din's ringing ears), but he was facing away from Din towards the mouth of the alley. Confusion plagued Din's mind as he tried to assess the situation. The child's yelling broke through the ringing midsentence.

"--n't you touch him! Don't come near!" the foundling shouted in part fury and fear. Din blinked and shook his head, placing his palm against the dirt and shakily pushing himself on to his hands and knees.

Raucous, deep laughter echoed in the alley around them, and Din's eyes finally came in to focus, settling on a group of unfriendly-looking strangers blocking their exit.

"Aren'tchu cute, little one," a large yellow alien with an underbite mocked in a deep, inhuman accent. "Shall we play with you, instead?" he hummed, a wicked smile making his sharp canines more visible.

"Don't! Stay back!" the child growled defensively, and Din noticed he was brandishing a knife in his small, trembling hands. Not just any knife, Din's knife. He willed his tired body into action at last, grunting and getting to his feet out of sheer stubborness.

He reached over the shoulder of the boy and seized the knife handle without preamble, pulling it from the weak grasp as the boy gasped. "Never steal a Mandalorian's weapon. It is a dishonor to wield a weapon without the owner's consent." The boy's fearful face turned to him, full of shock and now shame. Din hated to do this to him, but he needed the thugs to believe he didn't care about the wellbeing of the child for his gamble to pay off.

"Well, well, well...so you two sewer rats ain't acquainted after all?" the yellow alien sniped, and his cohorts sniggered in masochistic glee.

"No...," Din lied, and the boy hid his shock surprisingly well. Din grasped the collar of the boy and jerked him forward, the boy stumbling to obey his nonverbal command. Din prayed that he knew what was going on, that he played along. That he returned to the safety of the Covert. He didn't pray that the boy would have the wherewithal to send help, even as his gut burned with worry that he would need it.

"Scurry off to whatever hole in the wall you crawled out of this morning, and pray that I might just forgive you for lifting my knife," Din faux-threatened, tossing the boy out into the street and past the gang. Again, bringing harm to the child caused physical pain to Din, his stomach churning with guilt. But he knew the boy was smart, and now that he had regained his senses, he should be able to find his way back. The boy shuffled to his feet, rubbing his arm and wincing before looking back at Din. Din couldn't give a nod or even a tilt of his helmet, nothing betraying his concern for the kid. But the kid thankfully understood, and dashed off in the direction of the Covert. Din breathed a internal sigh of relief, not allowing his mouth to echo the sentiment, before a looming shape appeared above him.

"That's okay....you're a more interesting toy, anyway," the creature breathed, towering over Din menacingly as the others closed in around him in the dead-end alley.

\------

His _buy'ce_ and the _Resol'nare_ brought courage to Din even in the most trying of times. His faith and his fealty to the Creed afforded him confidence he would otherwise lack, which often served well to blot out any traces of fear he felt rising in him.

That's why, instead of being afraid when a huge meaty hand swiped him across the helmet, knocking him to the ground, his instinct was to fight back, to defend himself.

However, within minutes, it was made clear to him that he wasn't getting out of this in one piece. He was fairly certain his arm was broken as it was wrenched at an awkward angle behind his back, and he could feel an intrusive burning sensation near his right hip, though he couldn't identify what kind of injury it was from the pain alone. Din felt the cold sweat of fear trickling in, which had only hovered in his periphery before.

"What a shiny toy helmet, let's see what's underneath!" one attacker mused in a sing-song voice, reaching towards him with the clear intent to rid him of his visor.

Din flinched painfully against the hold on his arm that had him pinned stomach down to the ground. Even though he knew he wouldn't get away, he wasn't going down without a fight. In one fluid motion, he fired the grappling hook from his free arm at the dumpster and rammed it into the skull of the alien reaching for him. The alien collapsed, unconscious or dead Din didn't care, and the remaining four stopped in their tracks.

He took advantage of their shock to yank his arm free with a grunt, and within a moment, another thug was clutching their own throat as steaming blue blood gushed freely from the knife wound Din had just inflicted. The blood splattered against Din's armor, but he didn't hesitate, lunging towards a third attacker with his knife.

Before he could make contact, however, that giant swiping hand from earlier struck his back and shoved him to the dirt once again, knocking the air from his already weak lungs. Din coughed wetly, tasting blood in his mouth. He grit his teeth and spat out a warning, "If you're going to remove my helmet, you might as well kill me! Because if you don't kill me then you won't live to see tomorrow!"

"Interesting negotiation tactic," came the sarcastic reply from the large yellow alien, who appeared to be their ringleader. "Fine, we'll leave the helmet on. But you're going to let us take some other armor off."

"Ha," Din deadpanned. "I don't think it's the right size for you..." 

"Oh it's not the armor we're after," the alien replied in a low threat, his gaze raking over Din's prone form with a hungry gleam. Din froze, a shiver ran through his body. The alien laughed wickedly. "Now, you see what I'm after! Give me what I want, and your helmet stays on. I swear," the alien held one of his four meaty hands up in a gesture of promise. "Do we have a deal?"

Din knew in his weakened state he couldn't stave them off alone, he knew that this bargain would allow him to maintain his oath. It would cost him his dignity, but no one was there to see him lose it anyway. No one that mattered, at least. He went limp in resignation, closing his eyes. _This Is The Way_ , he chanted inwardly, steeling himself.

"...yes." He whispered, the sound barely audible as it filtered through his helmet, and punctuated by the heaving breaths he was gulping down. The remaining thugs exchanged smiles, and descended upon him without mercy.

\------

To say it was humiliating is to put a name to something that defies description. To say it was painful is to limit the suffering he endured to something that can be expressed with words.

Din lost part of himself in that alley. But he didn't lose his helmet, he didn't lose the foundling, and he didn't lose The Way.

The alien had kept his promise, though he was anything but honorable with his actions. Din felt the ache inside him for weeks after, an empty hole that had opened up in his chest and was sucking the life out of him. When Paz returned one day a few weeks after the incident with the alien's head in a bag, Din couldn't help himself. He felt a sick satisfaction burn through him. Though the nightmares still woke him occasionally, he felt whole again in a odd, bitter way.

\------

Din pulled himself out of the memory and back to the present, feeling the hot blood gathering in his cowl as he grit his teeth. Cara looked down at him, words of encouragement spilling from her lips. But remembering one of the darkest times of his adult life had only galvinized his resolve. These were the lengths to which he would go in order to protect that part of himself, and that of which he was a part. If he could withstand that, then death would be easy.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this. 
> 
> The Mandalorian culture relies heavily on honor and faith. I wanted to explore just how dedicated Din Djarin was to his cause that he would not hesitate to embrace death over violating the Resol'nare. 
> 
> I hesitated to post this due to the sensitive nature of the content, but I think I wrote the perspective in a way that still respects the character and the universe. The show does not shy away from placing our enigmatic hero in distress, and it made me wonder if he would be able to get out of similar situations when he was younger and less experienced.
> 
> Also, it didn't need to be said in the context of the story but it is worth mentioning that Din Djarin does not hold what happened to him against the child he rescued that day. 
> 
> Please leave a comment if you liked it, or if you have any helpful feedback. Not beta'd so there may be typos.
> 
> Thank you.


End file.
